F1guynz

"It may well be possible that we'll resume operations in China and potentially Australia before the end of October." Living in New Zealand, I find the above statement from the earnings call to reconcile with what I see happening in this region Australian International borders are closed to everyone except returning Australians and passengers with exemptions, and anyone arriving in the country must undergo a two-week quarantine at their cost. The Australian Government has banned all International travel unless you have an exemption. Borders between states are closed due to the surge in cases in Melbourne, so it is not possible to travel from Sydney (New South Wales) to other states within Australia. New Zealand borders are closed to everyone except New Zealand citizens, likely until the end of the year and possibly longer. Anyone arriving in the country will have to undergo a two-week quarantine at their own cost. The limitations above are in place for the foreseeable future, and it is highly unlikely there will be any relaxation by October/November. Any crew arriving would have to quarantine before passengers would be allowed on board, crew and passengers would have to quarantine again for voyages to New Zealand. There is a general distrust of the cruise industry after the Ruby Princess and Diamond Princess outbreaks earlier in the year, particularly the Ruby Princess which was responsible for aiding the original spread of the virus in New South Wales. I am not familiar with the situation in China, so this might be a more realistic appraisal for that region.

We were originally pointed on that cruise but have rebooked for next year. The final payment isn’t due until 30th August so I would just let things play out until then. If the cruise is not cancelled by then I suggest cancelling using the Cruise with Confidence (CwC) guarantee so that you get the $100 FCC. Not ideal but at least if circumstances change again you will have some time to use it. The other option is lose it completely. The deposit amount you mention sounds unusual as it is normally $400 with Royal for cruises of this length. Is this through a travel agent? One other more risky thought I have is to move your booking to one of October 2020 bookings still on sale as these will be highly likely being cancelled in the next few days, the deposit will move with it not costing you any more. You can book a cruise out of Sydney towards the end of the month so you will have a 2-3 weeks until final payment is due, once it is cancelled by Royal you can apply for the full cash refund. if it doesn’t cancel then just use the CwC policy to get your $100 credit before final payment. With Australians not allowed to leave the county and nobody allowed into Australia it is impossible for the cruises to proceed. i just booked one for October 2020 and paid in full to get the 125% FCC to apply to one of our other cruises we have booked.

Fantastic!! I am so excited for you as that is an awesome itinerary. As they say "go big or go home" and you have definitely gone big. We did 3 weeks in Alaska a few years ago and loved it. By the time you have cruised NZ and Alaska you will be all sceneried out. ? We are booked on Ovation for the same TP so hopefully we will be able to meet up.

I did a L&S on one of our cruises where the price on the new sailing was cheaper. In this case it is much easier to get them to move the cruise rather than doing a L&S. I made the mistake of thinking it would update to the lower price but I had to spend quite a bit of time of the phone with them to sort it out. In the end I just got them to honour the lowest price guarantee.

Just imagine how many FCC's @twangster is having to keep track of ? The kind of stuff from which spreadsheets are made.

In this announcement I observe they have cancelled Australian cruises until 29th October which is into the period when Royal ships would be due to arrive. We originally had 2 cruises booked for November 2020 but moved to November 2021 before the mad rush of cancellations and rebooking begins.

We have always had GS on the hump as these are the most central to the lifts. We have been on both sides of the ship as well so there is no disadvantage there. We do avoid interconnecting cabins as that can effect the couch size and position. The only noise we noticed was the crew or people moving deck chairs at night but in all other ways they were great.

Thanks for the advice Raye, I have changed to one of the middle cabins on deck 10 as they are all still available at the moment. November next year feels so far away but it something to look forward to. We are going to do a B2B around NZ and the Pacific Islands. You will have to come down this way for a cruise sometime once normal service resumes ? Cheers, Carl

Would you go for middle GLS over a corner one? We have one booked on Ovation next year but I flip-flopping about which would be better value.

It’s funny, I was just thinking the other day how much better the website used to be a few years ago. Royal must be one of the few companies that continually takes away functionality from the website. Remember when you could View all the payment information on one tab with the timeline that showed amount paid, final payment date, amount owning etc. sort cruises by cabin class price rather than the lcheapest cabin. cancel a cruise upgrade your cabin without calling update your crown and anchor preferences And these are just the ones I remember. How I long for the good old days of not having to contact their frustrating Call Centre

Pre covid I always used to get an guest invoice email for cruise bookings and another for each cruise planner purchase. I was finding I would end up with 8-9 copies of the invoice. Post covid I find I get one when I contact Royal to book a new cruise but when I have used the best price guarantee they just update the price and do not send a new guest invoice. I can only tell they have made the changes I requested by checking the final payment amount has updated. Maybe it is a Australia/NZ thing.

I did look at this but with the exchange rate cruises are still cheaper in NZD and also include all gratuities. Last years Canaries trip on Independence seems like such a long time ago now. looking forward to getting back to cruising but I don’t think it will be until the 21/22 season starts down here.

This depends a lot on which country you live in. Here in NZ you cannot book refundable and move to non refundable at a later date. If the cruise does get cheaper and you have a refundable deposit you can cancel and rebook at the lower rate. However, the refundable fare price is quite a lot higher than non refundable so if the cruise does not get cheaper or in fact goes up you are stuck with paying the extra $ for the refundable fare. The deposit here for seven night or longer cruises is $400 NZD and the refundable cost can be up to $700 NZD so we still tend to book NRD and if the price drops significantly cancel and lose the deposit as sometimes this works out better. Our last Independence cruise was an example of this when the price of the Owners Suite dropped $2500 less than the GS we had booked at the time. Cancelled the GS and lost the deposit so save $2100 ($2500 - $400).

How many of these "new" bookings are bookings using FCC rather than additional cash? With the number of cruises being cancelled I would expect that a lot of the new bookings to actually been transferred without a great outlay of new cash. I wonder if they will open new seasons bookings earlier this year to generate an influx of new cash.

Lift and Shift works well for repetitive cruises like the 7 night Caribbean cruises but less so with ports with varied itineraries. We have a B2B cruise booked for November to NZ and the Pacific Islands respectively but now Royal have released next years cruises there is no equivalent cruise to shift to our 12 night cruise which has been replaced by an 11 night sailing. The only 12 night sailing in our window is the Christmas 2021 cruise which is specifically excluded in the terms and conditions. We will have to wait until our November cruises are cancelled by Royal and possibly take the FCC. Our final payment is August but I am not sure I want the much money tied up with Royal given the current financial climate.

I think the issue would be the crew on the ship. It is likely they would have to quarantine on arrival to Australia and NZ as they are not residents. Then how do you manage any replacement crew members. I think from a management point of view it will far easier for the government to just extend the ban.

I notice the family from America who are suing Royal Caribbean regarding the injuries they sustained while on White Island have retained MIchael Winkleman as their lawyer for the lawsuit. This lawyer is the same one who worked on behalf of the family whose baby fell from Freedom of the Seas. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12338900

Today we got our full refund for our March cruise. It took 59 days but I was fine with waiting as I knew they were busy. prior to the refund we received two emails, the first apologising for the delay, the second, received last week, advising they would be processing the refund that week and to check the account the following week. It looks like they pay them on Thursday’s as a friend on a different cruise also received his yesterday as well.

We have a B2B scheduled on Ovation for November. while our case count has been 0 the last couple of days it is still too soon to see how the cruise season might pan out. There is talk of a trans Tasman travel bubble but this would be limited to Australian and New Zealand citizens I think. i am not hopeful that our cruise will go ahead at this stage. I think it will be a couple of months at least before things will become clearer.about travel options and tourism in general.

Below is the principles of ACC New Zealand's accident compensation scheme provides accident insurance cover for accidental injuries to New Zealand citizens and residents and to temporary visitors to New Zealand. Most ACC claims involve physical injuries caused by accidents. However, sometimes nervous shock and other mental conditions are covered too (see “Nervous shock and other mental conditions: Sometimes covered”, under “When you're covered by ACC and when you're not”). Sometimes physical conditions may be covered even though they're caused gradually (for example, through long-term exposure at work to substances like asbestos: see “Conditions caused gradually: Covered only if work-related”, under “When you're covered by ACC and when you're not”). To make a claim, you don't have to show that some other person was at fault and caused your injury, and so ACC is sometimes described as “a no-fault scheme”. Whether you fell over at home, or twisted your knee playing sport, or were injured in a car accident when another driver failed to give way to you, you'll be covered by ACC. The ACC scheme has been running since the mid-1970s. When the scheme was introduced, it took away the right to sue in the courts for injuries covered by the scheme. However, if your injury isn't covered by ACC and was caused by someone else's actions, you can sue them in court for compensation (“damages”). For example, you might sue for negligence. Accident Compensation Act 2001, ss 317, 319 Note: In some cases, you may be able to sue in the courts for what are called “exemplary damages” even if your injury is covered by ACC. Exemplary damages are awarded by the courts for particularly blatant and reckless behaviour that causes an injury to someone. They're awarded to punish the wrongdoer (so they're sometimes called “punitive” damages), and they go over and above an amount that's necessary to compensate the person who was injured.

Our 28th March cruise was cancelled but we have not received any C&A points. We did opt for the full refund rather than a 125% FCC so that may have played a part in not getting any points.

We have two cruises booked Ovation scheduled for November but I am not hopeful that they will go ahead. NZ is currently in lockdown and we are getting close to eliminating the virus, we will find out today whether this lockdown has been extended and when we might expect to move into a lower level of isolating. Once the virus is eliminated or kept low the Government has warned that travel restrictions will remain in place, possibly until the end of this year. There maybe some limited travel between Australia and NZ but it is likely that there will be some isolation required. There is also a lot of anger towards the cruise industry due to the Ruby Princess which has indirectly caused a large number of cases in Australia and a few in NZ. I think people will be scared to let ships into their ports at least until there is a vaccine available. I personally don’t feel the cruise season will restart until the 2021/22 season in October next year. i think we will need to wait a couple more months before the situation gets a little clearer.

There are no restrictions that would prevent a cruise out of Auckland around NZ but generally if a cruise does depart Auckland it will either go to Australia or up to the a South Pacific. P&O, Princess and Celebrity occasionally depart Auckland and I have seen Royal once or twice but not recently. The main reasons I think it is not offered are cruises over 7 nights would be primarily limited to the North Island and the tip of the South Island due to time constraints Most Royal cruisers are Australian and with Auckland’s population being Just over 1 million it would not be economic to have regular cruises from here. P&O originally did have a ship home ported in Auckland but it moved to Australia so that suggests a better return on investment. it is cheap to fly around NZ so most kiwis would just fly or drive to see NZ. Also generally if we do travel we prefer to go overseas. a large part of our tourism is based on Australians coming here for their holidays. These are just my thoughts but I wouldn’t expect any Auckland departures in the near future.

Royal Caribbean has decided to use its own ships in Australia to repatriate Indonesian, Filipino, Chinese and Indian crew members to their countries. Three Royal Caribbean cruise ships based in Australia will embark to Asia very soon in order to return most of the crew back home. The company plans to embark 2584 crew from 5 Royal Caribbean ships which are currently at anchor in Australia, and use Spectrum of the Seas, Ovation of the Seas and Voyager of the Seas to set sail to Indonesia, Philippines and China. Royal Caribbean’s ships will be refueled and restocked with the healthy crew before departing to a long journey to Asia. P&O Australia and Princess cruises are also undertaking similar voyages. Link to the story: http://crew-center.com/royal-caribbean-use-three-australia-based-cruise-ships-repatriate-crew-members-home

Now that P&O Australia has been forced from their Sydney home port they are heading to the Philippines and Indonesia to bring their crew home. A nice gesture by them. http://crew-center.com/po-australia-fleet-sailing-philippines-and-indonesia?fbclid=IwAR1TZkVvJSDaaIZNhM_CCfYX24YJ9guTITub2zJNwHOQ8cI5nH5lqquqOkc